Shanta Kumar Committee Report recommends that FCI hand over all procurement operations of wheat, paddy and rice to states that have gained sufficient experience in this regard and have created reasonable infrastructure for procurement. These states are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Punjab (in alphabetical order).

FCI will accept only the surplus (after deducting the needs of the states under NFSA) from these state governments (not millers) to be moved to deficit states. FCI should move on to help those states where farmers suffer from distress sales at prices much below MSP, and which are dominated by small holdings, like Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam etc.

There is a need of coming to an agreement between FCI and the states regarding costing norms before every procurement season. States should get a clear direction from the centre that if there is any bonus being given on the top of MSP, grains will not be accepted by the Centre under the central pool. There should also be proper quality checks and specified quality standards are not met than anything below those standards, the central pool will not be accepting it.

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